page_title: Rongo
section_title: Kumara
hierarchical_section_title: Rongo / Kumara
caption_attribution_description: This is a kumara (a kind of sweet potato). Deutsch: Batate oder Süßkartoffel Ipomoea batatas English: Kūmara (sweet potato)
context_page_description: In Māori mythology, Rongo or Rongo-mā-Tāne is a major god of cultivated plants, especially kumara, a vital crop. Other crops cultivated by Māori in traditional times included taro, yams, cordyline, and gourds. Because of their tropical origin, most of these crops were difficult to grow except in the far north of the North Island, hence the importance of Rongo in New Zealand.
  He was also an important god of agriculture and god of war in the southern Cook Islands, especially on Mangaia where the Akaoro marae and Orongo marae were centres of his worship; where cooked taro and human sacrifices were offered to him to assure success in battle and the fertility of land.
  A legend concerning Rongo flying the first kite is told in the waiting room of Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, in which Rongo is voiced by Ernest Tavares.
context_section_description: He would have had more of an association with the small, yellow-skin, finger-sized variety known as hutihuti, rekamaroa, and taputini, which the Māori had brought with them from eastern Polynesia, rather than larger varieties brought by later sealers, traders, and whalers in the early 19th century.
  In the Māori language, rongo can mean 'peace' (after war). Rongo is generally portrayed as the creator of the kumara, a plant associated with peace; probably because the intense cultivation it needed was best performed in times of peace.
  In Ngāti Awa traditions, Rongo is a son of Tāne and father of the kumara, but a man named Rongo-māui travels to Whānui, from whom he steals the kumara and returns to Earth with it.
  Small statues representing Rongo were once placed alongside kumara fields.
caption: The red (purple) cultivar of kumara is the most popular variety in New Zealand.
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